Performance Measures for 21 st Century Libraries

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to review European Commission funded performance measurement studies and in particular to report briefly on the outcomes and lessons of the EQUINOX project. Based on this experience and other research in CERLIM, the paper then goes on to examine some models that may be useful in developing our understanding of libraries in the 21st century. Finally some examples of the types of library performance indicators, which might be applied in the future, are suggested. "Librarianship is a curious profession in which we select materials we don't know 'will be wanted, which we can only imperfectly assess, against criteria which cannot be precisely defined, for people we've usually never met and if anything important happens as a result we shall probably never know, often because the user doesn't realise it himself." (Charton, quoted by Revill, 1985).